What’s going ‘pong’ on Columbia’s Main Street? Table tennis draws fresh eyes to Soda City
The ball claps against the rubber back of a wooden paddle and whips across the table.
Then it’s CRACK, thunk. CRACK, thunk. Back and forth and back – until the little hollow orb leaps off the table, earning the player on the other side a point.
Table tennis – which casual players might call Ping-Pong – is addictive. That’s one of the first things the members of the sport’s small but growing fandom in Columbia will tell you.
It’s this fervor for the tabletop racket sport that took 19-year-old Midlands Tech student Tripp Roche all the way to Columbia City Hall, where he pitched an idea. What if he could bring table tennis to the masses?
On the first Saturday of November, he got his wish. Columbia has installed a permanent tennis table right on Main Street – Roche’s idea – for people to play during the city’s weekly Soda City street fair. And so far, it’s drawing some attention.
Roche and a few other pong-obsessed players have spent every Saturday morning for the last three weeks at the new table, located in a pocket park by the Tapp’s building near Blanding and Main streets. That’s a block that features a burgeoning array of businesses, including Mast General Store, the Nickelodeon movie theater, Lula Drake Wine Parlour, and bar and bowling alley The Grand on Main, in addition to being one of the core blocks that gets filled with vendors and throngs of people and during Main Street’s ever-popular Soda City market.
“It’s one of those games, if you’ve got it in you, wherever you go you’ll find people who play,” said Komi Tepe, who has come to play at the table during Soda City every Saturday so far in November.
Tepe is a 42-year-old civil engineer. He acknowledges that he probably would not be spending his Saturdays with a group of mostly college students if not for the game.
“All these kids, I wouldn’t have talked to them,” he said. “I think doing these activities exposes you to all sorts of people.”
Priyansh Joshi, a physics teacher at Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, started playing because he wanted to better connect with his students. Then he developed a slight obsession. He even watches videos of professionals to learn new moves.
“[But] the funniest part is even small kids can beat your a**,” he joked.
Roche has become something of a table tennis evangelist. This summer he launched a public club called Carolina Pong and invited people to play at the gym at St. Andrew Park every Monday night. The club has grown to more than 40 members.
Then Roche lobbied the city to install the Soda City table, and he hopes for two more public pong tables to be installed at Finlay Park when it reopens in late 2025.
Several members of the University of South Carolina Table Tennis Club also came out to the new Soda City table Saturday morning. On Sunday, the club would be playing Clemson and they needed to prepare.
The Saturday morning games are casual, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t going to show off.
The crew in attendance agreed Roche and another player who did not want to share his name were the best of the bunch. They can do trick moves like a “snake shot” where the player does a winding motion with their arm to put a spin on the ball – making it appear like it will go one way but then it goes the other direction.
Next weekend, Roche is hosting a challenge. The first amateur player (no professionals allowed) to beat him will win $200.
Around noon, Roche and the others start to pack up. Most of the group is already planning on being here again next week.
“People are coming back,” Roche said with pride.
This story was originally published November 20, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
